LONDON – Two men accused of masterminding Britain’s largest porn DVD distribution businesses were jailed Monday on charges including obscenity and money laundering. Tehsin Panju and Hitendra Patel, both of London, each admitted to one count of conspiracy to publish obscenity. Panju also admitted to three counts of money laundering. Each man received at 15-month prison sentence.According to published reports, Panju, 49, and Patel, 47, sold “hundreds of thousands” of £8 pornographic DVDs through a mail-order company called Direct Media, which they established in 2002. Prosecutors estimated that approximately 25 percent of the DVDs were obscene under British law, although the men’s defense team argued the obscenity quotient was closer to 1 percent. During a raid conducted in July 2008, police reported filling five trucks with material confiscated from the pair’s headquarters in the Shepherds Bush section of west London. In addition, authorities recovered DVD copying equipment, a client database and nearly £74,000 in cash.
“This is, to date, the largest seizure of pornographic material the [London Metropolitan Police] Obscene Publications Squad has ever dealt with,” prosecutor Natasha Tahta told BBC News.
According to sentencing judge Peter Fingret, “[T]he scale of the operation, even on the basis of a small percentage, would necessarily involve a large number of obscene DVDs. I do not accept the principal objective was to provide the needs of your customers. The primary objective was clearly to make money from what was, on any view, a lucrative and seedy business.”
